A Ring, a Sewing Machine, and a Business

CEED SEB Business Advisor Elizabeth Collis tell us how an unusual proposal led to her first entrepreneurial project.

Around the water cooler the other day the conversation turned to the degree of romanticism of our partners. My husband falls in the very low end of the romantic nature scale and, to illustrate that point, I told my colleagues about how when he proposed, he actually asked me if I would prefer an engagement ring or a sewing machine. I added that it was by having the sewing machine that we were able to start our first business together (no, I didn’t choose the sewing machine – I got both!)
This was the mid-eighties and we were living in the Middle East. Like elsewhere, aerobics classes were all the rage and those weights which you strapped on your wrists or ankles were just coming in. You couldn’t buy them where we were, so I made my own pair using car seat plastic, Velcro, and sand. The next thing I knew, the owner of the health club was asking me to make a whole bunch, and we were in business. I didn’t think I had an entrepreneurial bone in my body, but after the first sale, I was hooked. After an embarrassing incident when a set of weights split in a class, sending sand cascading across the wooden floor, we adjusted our design and soon had a production line going on my balcony. My mother-in-law’s old-fashioned scales were set up to weigh the sand, my husband cut the materials, and I sewed. The word spread and so did our weights across the city’s health clubs and gyms.
We financed our emigration to Canada with that first enterprise, and have continued to build a family and business together, working as a couple and as entrepreneurs. The sewing machine I left behind, but the ring and love for creating a business are still with me. And oh yes – so is my husband!

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